Julia Gets Wise with Roz Chast

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If you've been listening to our Wives With Me podcast for a while, you've heard lots of episodes that were recorded with me sitting in my cozy little office in Pacific Palisades, California, surrounded by my beautiful... things, mementos, photos of my family and my friends, books that were very important to me, and art that made me comfortable or inspired me, or both, definitely both. Well, all of that is gone now, burned up in the Pacific Palisades fire at the beginning of the year.

It was a fire that destroyed everything in our home, and of course the structure itself. It was a 1929 Spanish Revival home built and designed by a painter named George Barker. I remember... A long time ago, when we drove up to look at that house, 32 years ago, it was a lot more house than we could afford at the time, and we pulled up in front of the house, and I took one look at it, and I said, uh-oh.

So in these little stories that I tell before episodes of the podcast and those stories this year, you're probably going to hear a bit about what we lost in that fire because, you know, it's actually, it's totally on my mind. This was a community tragedy for the whole Palisades and Altadena. And to tell you the truth, it's still raw. Every once in a while, I'll think of something, something that I need that's in a file in my office or something, and then I'll realize...

Oh, God, no, it's gone. It's burned up. It's gone forever. And that just happened to me a few days ago.

I love a good cartoon, a good magazine-style one-panel cartoon. I actually think cartoons are like poetry in a way. Poetry is the most distilled form of literature. The poet has the incredible ability to choose the right words and only the right words in just the right order for a poem. And in the same way, a cartoon...

can, almost magically, in just a drawing and a caption, paint a comic picture that has all the elements—surprise, cleverness, wit, and sometimes even real profundity. But first, they're funny. God, I love cartoons so much that I had a file in my office of cartoons. And now, of course, they're gone.

These were not necessarily the best cartoons I've ever seen. Those were in books on my shelf. The Conrad's, the Gary Larson's, the Linda Barry's, the Roz Chass. Those were just up on the shelf. They're gone too, but I can replace books. These were just random comics that made me laugh so I'd cut them out of something. Here's one of them. A caveman is showing a stone wheel with a hole in it. Maybe the first wheel ever.

to another caveman. And the one caveman, who appears to have invented the wheel, says to the other caveman, what am I going to do with it? I'm going to fuck it. Still makes me laugh. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a great cartoon. I mean, yes, it's crude and it's vulgar. My memory is that most of the cartoons in that file are, but...

I can't tell you how many times I pulled that cartoon out, and it made me laugh every single time. In fact, I'd argue that there's much more to that caveman cartoon than it might seem at first, starting with the stupidity of man. Since it burned up, I've really tried to find the cartoon. I've Googled it. I've used AI. I just can't find it. Or I couldn't find it.

And then just a week ago, I was looking through photos on my phone of the house for insurance purposes, which is so much fun, you guys, dealing with insurance and everything around that. And I was going through 2016, those photos, and for some reason, I had snapped a photo of this caveman cartoon. It's yellowed because I've probably had it for 30 years, but I mean, there it was.

I was very happy to find the facsimile. It's not the same as having the real thing. Turns out that the cartoonist is Carol Zahn. It's so odd, the things that are precious to us, isn't it? I mean, not being able to put my hands on that little file of cartoons is just an agony. But that agony makes me realize... More now than before the fire, actually. Maybe more lastingly, how much laughing matters to me. It's just everything, especially a deep, great cartoon laugh. There's nothing quite like it.

So how happy I am then that our wiser-than-me guest today is the great Roz Chast. I'm Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and this is Wiser Than Me, the podcast where I get schooled by women who are wiser than me. Few artists have mapped the emotional terrain of modern American life in quite the way Roz Chast has.

Roz has been a contributing cartoonist with The New Yorker since 1978. That's nearly 50 years of nervous characters, apartments packed with way too many lamps, and families on the edge of total collapse. In addition to New Yorker cartoons, Roz has written some of the funniest, most painfully honest work about the things no one really wants to talk about. Death, aging, and the daily panic of just being alive.

She's taken what could easily be grotesque, dysfunctional moments in life and somehow flipped them into stories that feel intimate and truthful and funny. And that, my friends, is a big trick. And it's a very excellent trick. She's written children's books with Steve Martin. She's illustrated essays and published collections like Going Into Town and What I Hate from A to Z, each one expanding her peculiar kind of journey.

Truth is, she's just entirely thrown out every cartoon convention. Her memoir, Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant, just... Killed me. It really did. I absolutely loved it, and I can't recommend it highly enough. It's hilarious, and it's heartbreaking, which is why it's won basically every award a book can win, the Kirkus Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award. National Book Award finalist, and in 2024...

President Biden gave her the National Humanities Medal, for God's sakes. What is so striking to me is that Roz can tell an incredibly personal story and make it comical without... ever trivializing the subject matter. Her work reminds you of your own life. The difficulties of being a person are her very source material. And somehow... Her way of drawing it, writing it, naming it, it's soothing. It's like a salve on a wound.

When her mother suddenly regains her appetite close to her death, Roz wrote, Please welcome. A mother, a grandmother, and a woman who's been married forever to a lovely man who, by all accounts, can decorate the hell out of a house on Halloween. Please welcome the brilliant, bewildered, a complete original, and truly so much wiser than me, Roz Chast.

Hi, Julia. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. I am such an admirer of you and your work. Oh, my God. I can't believe you're saying that. I feel the same about you. Goo Goo Gaga to meet you. I'm so excited. Well, me too. Me too. I'm like, ah, you know. I'm doing the same. I have been. an admirer of yours from afar forever. It feels like forever. I just have followed you. I read all your cartoons. Every time your cartoon comes up, I'm fangirling out, but it's the truth.

Well, it's totally, totally mutual here. I mean, Seinfeld, you were my character. I mean, I just loved it. I loved so much about that character. That it was a girl whose friendships with like guys, like kind of odd girl guys, but very, very funny. And, and I don't know, I never felt like there's a lot of shows I feel like on TV that.

The way that the person acts as a sort of female character, I can't relate to it at all. It's just, I don't know. I don't know what it is. But Elaine, I definitely got. Well, that's the highest compliment. And I'm very... Happy for it. So anyway, are you comfortable if I ask your real age? Yes. And how old are you? I am now 70. Wow.

I know. I know. That was a kind of a, uh, yeah. A biggie. A biggie. How old do you feel, Roz? Ah, I don't, I don't know. Somewhere probably... Less than that? But I don't know. I mean, because 70 is, it's so abstract in a way. Yeah. To say, well, what does 70 feel like? Well, I don't know. I haven't been 70 before. And everybody is so different, you know, the way they age. So I don't know. I don't know.

What do you think is the best part about being your age right now, if you could identify it? I think that every moment that... I'm not in pain or that somebody I love is not in pain or that I'm not dealing with some crisis just feels like, whoa, fantastic. Whoa, that rocks. And you just become more aware as you get older.

It's like you're walking through like an asteroid field, except the asteroids just get like more numerous. And maybe closer to your ear as they whiz by. Yeah, exactly. And you see like friends get hit by them. Oh, shit. Yeah. You know, and it just sucks. It's really stupid. It's really completely idiotic. But, you know, what choice do we have? Yeah, you carry on. You carry on, yeah.

So talking about your work, the thing that I just admire and my jaw drops at is... how you have successfully cultivated your own sort of inner anxiety into something that is joyful. And do you perceive it like that? Do you think about it like that? Probably not. I don't know. I don't know. I feel like there's some relationship

For me, between anxiety and hilarity. Yeah, for sure. But I'm not quite sure what it is because it's not usually at the same time. There's like some time gap. It's like maybe it's that. Everything seems to alternate between hilarity and anxiety and hilarity and anxiety. There are funny things, you know, that happen sometimes even when you have, you know, have something that's making you very, very nervous. I mean, I've had, you know, laughing.

attacks when I'm on stage supposing to be talking about something really serious or something and then suddenly I start thinking about something and I can't stop laughing. That's the best kind of laughter and the worst kind of laughter.

laughter when you're not supposed to laugh. Oh, my God. Yes. Totally. I mean, it's like you're on a drug or something. Yeah. And you can't stop. And you can't stop. Yeah. And it gets the worse and worse. And you know you're getting in trouble. I remember when I was in... high school, I was in this, they called it Glee Club, and we had to sing some horrible song about...

About raising kids. It was like, turn around and you're one, turn around and you're two, or, you know, some horrible song. And I became... During the concert, I became hysterical laughing, and I had to put the thing up over my face, the music up over my face. I got in so much trouble. It was such a stupid song. Oh, yeah. I mean, that used to happen to me. There were words when I was a kid.

the word pimple made me laugh like a crazy person. And it wasn't like it came up every 10 seconds or anything, but if for some reason it came up. It would just make me laugh and laugh and laugh. Have you used the word in your cartoons ever? I have not. I did do a cartoon about mosquito bites and naming them because, you know, I guess I'm a... so boring. I'm allergic to them, so they tend to last a long time. And you can get sort of nostalgic. It's like, oh, there's, you know, Sheila.

I remember when Sheila, when I got Sheila and I can still see like the scar and she's going away. I'll miss her, but you know. R.I.P. Sheila. Yeah. Yeah.

Incredible. And what kind of child were you like? And can you sort of walk us through, you know, whatever, 9, 10-year-old Roz? What were you like? Just... Fucking hated being a kid. Just really hated it. You know, I was a weirdo. I was, you know, an only kid. My parents were super overprotective to the point where they made me feel like... you know,

You really shouldn't, you know, kids carry diseases. They were dirty. They spoke with Brooklyn accents that, you know, somebody had bad posture and I shouldn't play with them. They were bad influences. They were smarter than me. They were more sophisticated. could take advantage of me. This is mostly my mother, not my father. My father, I think, felt sorry for me, but he was afraid of her too. I think she was trying to keep me safe. Right, because they had lost a child before you. Yes, exactly.

They didn't want that to happen. And I really had no idea how to play with other kids. I really hated it. Just hated it. Waiting to grow up. I was actually like that myself, too. I didn't have those same kind of anxieties, but I couldn't wait to get older. I couldn't wait to get older. It's funny. Oh, me too. You know, some people love being children.

They loved it, and I was not one of those people. Yeah, I have friends who loved being a kid, and they tell me about their adventures and things they did, and they got into trouble, and they did this, and it was like... I never did any of those things. I was not allowed. It was not fun. It was not interesting. I hated school. I was really waiting to grow up.

Yeah, well, I'm so glad we're talking about this because there's a cartoon of yours that I love. It's you as a child lying in bed surrounded by books. Can you tell us about this cartoon? Sure. This is a cartoon that I did. I can't remember what it was. It was for a magazine that asked me to submit. a photograph of myself as a child. And for some reason I said, is it okay if I do a drawing? And they said, fine. So I am nine years old. I'm on my bed.

I have a plate of what looks like a couple of Oreos or something. And I'm surrounded by books with titles like Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Scurvy, But We're Afraid to Ask, Diseases of the Tropics, A Child's Garden of Maladies. Lockjaw Monthly. I was really afraid of lockjaw and gangrene. I had a lot of hypochondria issues. The Big Book of Horrible Rare Diseases. And the main book is something that was a book of my childhood.

that I think forever changed me, which was the Merck Manual, which we had in our house because my mother's sister, my aunt, was a registered nurse, and she would give outdated copies of the Merck Manual to my mother. who love to read them. But what is the Merck Manual? Because lots of people don't know what that is. Okay, the Merck Manual is basically for doctors, and it lists every single disease and how to treat it and symptoms. And the...

suggestions for treating the disease with the different dosages of drugs and stuff, that was way over my head. But I was not stupid. I knew what symptoms and signs were. I knew I had leprosy more times than you could count. You know, I have a 24-hour leprosy many, many, many times. Were these things that all lived in your head or did you— Yes. You didn't articulate them to your parents? I would try. Uh-huh. I would try, but there was just no—you know, my mother would say—

You know, the typical kind of thing. She would say, you know, you're depressed. You have a roof over your head. You know, what are you complaining about? Because, you know, they were first generation Americans. They grew up incredibly poor, both of them. Right. Their parents didn't speak. any English. So to them, I was like, you know, the queen of Sheba. What was I complaining about? So how have you...

managed that childhood anxiety as you've gotten older? Has it popped out in other ways? Have you been able to wrestle it down? I guess in some ways. I ignore it. I mean, I don't cope with it very well. Let's put it that way. I mean, ignore it as in, like, I don't go to the doctor. I still have a lot of... health paranoia, even though most of the time I...

I feel pretty good. Knock on wood. Yeah, I'm knocking on wood because I'm superstitious. Yeah, me too. We have to do that thing. I don't know if your grandmother ever did the thing where they blow away the evil spirits. Oh, no, but that's a good one. Didn't do that. Yeah, they... Okay. Yeah, but over people's shoulders. Oh, I see. Yeah, like if you were standing right in front of me, I'd go...

Left, right, and left again. Left, right, left, or right, left, right. And you're dispersing the evil eye. All right. You do that at the same time you knock wood? You could do either. You could do both. You could add the salt, you know, depending on how bad it is. But no, I don't cope well with the health thing at all. And I try to repress it and just not deal with it. And I think, you know, most of the cartoonists I know tend to be sort of anxious. People. Yeah.

It's time to take a quick break. My conversation with Roz Chast continues in just a moment. And by the way, we just launched a Wiser Than Me newsletter where you can get behind-the-scenes details from my conversation with Roz Chast and more. You can subscribe at wisertheme.substack.com. You'll get photos and videos and letters from me occasionally. Exclusive bonus snippets, glimpses behind the scenes of the making of the podcast, a deeper dive into every guest, plus a place to connect.

with other Wiser Than Me listeners. I hope you subscribe at wisetheme.substack.com and stick around to see what we have in store. Be right back. Whether you're calling the wise women in your life, video calling your girlfriends across the country, or checking in on someone who always knows how to make you smile, staying connected matters. Those small conversations, shared laughs and...

quick hellos are what keep relationships strong, even when life gets busy. Some of the most life-giving conversations start with just a phone call. That's why AT&T has connectivity you depend on, guaranteed, or they'll proactively make it right, so you can focus on the moments and people that matter most. That's the AT&T guarantee. AT&T. Connecting changes everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com slash guarantee for details.

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When you were a child, did you realize that it was a dysfunctional situation that you were in? Or was it sort of a slow realization as you got older? I'm just wondering when it started to dawn on you that it was kind of a little bit mad in here. I think I started to realize it when I was around 10 or 11. I have this very... clear memory of playing with a girl who lived in my building. And, you know, because you have building friends. Yeah, I remember. People who live in your building.

And I wanted, I guess I was like 10 or 11, and I wanted to start a club called Against Mothers, called AM. And she was like just baffled by it. You know, she didn't want to do it. And I remember like sort of taking that knowledge in and thinking, oh.

Because, you know, when you're a kid, you think, oh, I hate my mother. Everybody must hate their mother. Sure, because that was your universe that felt like the norm. Yes. You know, she was just fucking mean. Yeah. So much of the time she was mean. Uh-huh. And I think she was tired. She worked really hard and she just didn't want to deal. Right. And I think also, you know, as I got older, you know. I think that losing that first baby really did her in. Sure. You know. Understandably so.

So I don't know, maybe that's a misreading of the situation. I don't think that's, it doesn't sound like a misreading to me. It's like the trauma was the fuel that sort of kept her in place in a weird way. As a mom, this trauma just was the driver. Yeah, I think it really kind of ruined... A lot more than, well, certainly more than I was aware of when I was a kid. Yeah. Because I didn't even know until I was 12. Oh, how did that come up? I was in the garage.

of my mother was the driver in our house. My father was too anxious to drive. So we're like leaving the garage and sitting in the back seat. And I asked my mother. tell me something about yourself you've never told me before. Oh. And she told me. And it was like, well, that's something I didn't expect. Wow. So she'd been carrying that.

you know, herself. And when she told you, Roz, did she tell you in a matter-of-fact way? Was she emotional telling you about it? I don't exactly remember. She would get emotional. But at the time she told me, I don't remember her being particularly emotional. I remember it just being like, well, yikes. Yeah. Were your parents, I don't think your mom was funny. Was your dad funny? Not. Intentionally. He was extremely anxious and sometimes his anxiety was funny to me.

In the moment? In the moment. Oh, yeah. And they were funny to me in a weird way, even though they didn't intend to be. Like, they would have these crazy fights and... I don't know. They were just so... Maybe they were just very typical for children of immigrant, first-generation American people, I think, in a lot of ways. But they would just have these arguments and fights and, you know, about how many olives my father should eat and, you know, like he would.

He would want five olives, and then she'd say, George, are you crazy? And then he'd say, okay, I won't have any olives, and then... And she'd say, no, you should have olives. Or he'd be sitting on the chair in this way that she didn't like. And she'd say, George, sit straight. You're twisting your kishkas. And kishkas being intestines where people don't know. And, you know, just like these insane sort of discussions. But they were funny in this way that was very old-fashioned. They told jokes.

My mother did, not my father. But my mother would tell, you know, and all of their friends, you know, they told those kind of Herman goes to the doctor. Punchline. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And I know your dad carried around that New Yorker. Yes. Or actually, was it a New Yorker cartoon? No, it was from the Saturday Review. But it was about New Yorker cartoons. Tell what it was. It was, I don't know who did the cartoon, but it was somebody at their...

shrinks lying on the couch, typical shrink cartoon setup. And the caption was the patient telling the shrink, I feel inferior because I don't understand the cartoons in The New Yorker. So my father loved this cartoon. He carried it around. My dad passed away, I don't know, 10 years ago or something now. And he used to just... go on and on about other people I was working with, about how good they were. Yeah. Yes, yes. Yes. And my father would ask me sometimes, like,

Very strange questions like, what sort of fellow is he named some cartoonist that I didn't really know that well? And he's like, I think he's nice. I don't know. Why are you asking? I don't know. Yeah, yeah. Strange. That's so funny. And how does it work at The New Yorker? Like, are you on staff?

Can you just talk us through the actual process of all of that and what your role is in it? I am under contract. So in some ways it's staff, but also there's no guarantee of... anything and I don't make a salary. So it's also sort of freelance. Geez. Yeah. So you mean, so they only pay you when they take your cartoons? Yeah. Wow. Exactly. Exactly. There's probably about 40 or 50 people, maybe more, who submit regularly.

By regularly, I mean like submitting every week. Is that you? Every week? Yes. Yes. Every week. And... You don't submit one cartoon, you submit a group, which since I started has been called The Batch. And so if you're talking to some cartoonist, it's like, did you send in your batch yet? How's The Batch? Yeah, so I usually aim for like six or seven cartoons. And, you know, let's say there's 50 people under contract.

Just to make the math easy, let's say 10 cartoons, it's 500 cartoons. And then another like at least 1,000, maybe more come in over the transom. Wow. And they only buy between 10 and 20 a week. It's from 1,500 cartoons to 10 to 20 a week, which is why if somebody says, you know, my niece or nephew or my kid, they want to be a cartoonist, you know, do you have any advice? I always say, if they can do...

something else, they should do that. They should do another thing. You know, don't do this. This is really when you don't have anything else that you can do. You know, this is what you do. Do you have anything else you can do? No. No, no, nothing. Nothing. I mean, you've been doing this since, what, 78, right? Yeah. 1978. Okay, so what have you learned? I guess I've learned that maybe...

I'd rather do this than not do this. Oh, I hear you. And the thing about art, one thing that's really good is that unlike being an athlete or a dancer... You can continue. Yeah. There's, it's not like. Right. Yeah. I mean, you can just kind of keep making work. And I do find that working. Knock on, again, wood. There's always new stuff. Yeah. There's always new stuff to learn and always, you know, new inspiration and new ideas and things to get excited about. And I mean, that is life for me.

Yeah. I mean, do you, do you, this is, I have to say before, this is like just jumping a little bit here. Yeah, sure. Who cares? The Last Fuckable Day is one of the most brilliant. things I have ever seen. Every line is so hilarious. It's so great. Is it you that goes off at the end with a cigar? Yeah. Or no, no. Yes, it is. It's me. I go off in the canoe. In the canoe. Yes, yes. Every bit of that is just the greatest. How did that...

Come about. Well, that came about because, let's see, it was for Amy Schumer. It was for her show. And... Nicole Hollisenter, who's a writer-director with whom I've worked. Oh, she's great. Yeah. Well, she directed that particular sketch. So she called me and she said, doing this, does this appeal to you? And I'm like... I mean, the title alone and the concept was like brilliant. And so I said, 100%. And so we went off into some woods somewhere and we shot it.

It was really fun, too, because we got to improvise and play with it. The baby lamb that, like... I don't remember, it was Tina Fey saying like some 80-year-old like guy like married, not just somebody who's 20, somebody who was 24 years younger and it was actually a baby lamb. Oh, I died. That was just so, so, and everybody's, oh.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And not even mad. It's like so stupid. It's so stupid. I think that's the key is that the reason that that really did work is because people weren't mad about it. At all. Yeah. We were just, um, in a weird way, almost delighted. Yes. It's like, good. Now you're not pestering me anymore. Now you're not like with your, just, uh. It just, every note it hit.

was just great it's like thank god nobody's asking me to walk around with my you know tits out to here and like here comes here comes the sex bomb you know here comes titty mcgee yeah Here comes Tiddy McGee. I know, I know. Who wants that? And then you see these like, you know, 75, 80 year old like people. who are still, like, being T.D. McGee. And you just think, what are you doing? Like, I don't know. I don't know. It just cracks me up. But, like...

If it makes you happy, then go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. I know. Oh, I'm so happy you like that. I really am. Do you ever say no to projects? Do you? Like people come to you and said... I don't know what it would be, but it's like it doesn't appeal to you. It's like gross or I don't know what it would be. I probably should have said no to more projects than I have. No, no.

I ask, like, I'm such a prostitute. It's like, well, what's your budget? You know, you want me to do a commercial for like tinfoil? You would be great in a commercial for tinfoil. I got news for you. I will buy so much tinfoil if you are hawking tinfoil. Oh, I... love to. It's like all the things you can do. You can just like quit your job and make one of those tinfoil balls.

open up like a store where you sell them tinfoil ball store and then you could like do like different things you could make like cubes and pyramids and it's like that's your life is just now tinfoil craft. I am here to tell you that you have got this gig wrapped up. I know. I'm like waiting now, like maybe Alcoa or whatever the company is. Reynolds Wrap. Reynolds Wrap will call me up after this and say, we never thought about that. Like an Etsy adjacent.

craft-adjacent. Totally. I'm Roz Chass with Reynolds Wrap. Exactly. Come on over. Oh, that makes me laugh. We're going to make it too. Yeah. And tinfoil balls. We can turn it into a necklace. Yes, exactly. Exactly. It's hilarious. Okay.

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So you've been married for how long? We married in 84. So 40. What year is it? 25. 41 years. Something like that. Yeah, something like that. So what was your courtship like? Well, our first date was Eraserhead. Oh, really? Yeah, midnight show at the Elgin, so... Oh, wow. Did you like him right away? Yeah, I did. I did. I actually thought that he was too normal and too cute for me. So that's always a good sign.

So you had lived in New York your whole life. And then after you had your second child, you moved to Connecticut. And I know that was a very rough transition, right? Leaving the city. Yes and no. I have what a friend of mine calls a pomme de terre in the city, which I got 11 years ago. And I'm in the city a lot. I'd say three out of five weeks I'm in for a few days. Oh, I see.

I mean, I really, I think the hardest thing about moving out of the city was the driving. Well, one of the hardest, because I didn't learn how to drive till we moved out of the city. And I really hate it. I really do not like cars. I don't like driving. I don't like putting gas in my car. I don't like the noises it makes. I have like car hypochondria, you know, where it's just like, what is that smell? What is that sound? What is that?

supposed to be doing that. Yes. What kind of car do you drive, may I ask? It's a Subaru Forester from 2008. Yes. vaguely like it because I sort of know how to turn it on and... I know it's like weird things and I'm afraid of like new cars. I don't like the button cars. Oh, yeah. The button cars are tough. That's a big transition. I hate, hate, hate. I will not do that. I will not do that. Because you live in fear of not turning it off, for starters. That's it.

And even people who are like, oh, what are you afraid of with a button? It's so easy. They sometimes like, oh, I forgot. Is it on or off? They're not sure. And that's like really creepy to me. I just don't like it. I don't like anything. So being in the city, it's like you don't have to drive. You can go anywhere. So you do everything you can to avoid driving? Yes. Would you have somebody else? Oh, yeah. And then you became a parent in the suburbs.

Yes. And so talk about that. I love the story you told about somebody giving you, you were at a parent. something or other, and they gave you ice to break up? Oh, yeah, that was awful. You know, there's a lot of people who have... Somehow they know how to do everything like this. And I was at one of those horrible field days, you know, they have. Where the kids and the parents are all playing outside. Yes, and somebody gave me this giant bag of ice.

break up and I had no idea how to do this. And she just like sort of took it away from me and like dropped it a few times on the ground and, you know, sort of wordlessly, but just disgusted, you know. With you. With me. Yeah. When you told that story, I thought, I have to tell you this story, which is I was at my kid's school, and it was like Pilgrim Day or something. And I know already you're unhappy.

Some mother had made a bunch of cookies in the shape of, I don't know, colonial things. I'm not sure. I can picture the hats. Yeah. And the kids were going to decorate them. And I was sort of bringing them over to the kid table. And I dropped like a plate and a few of them, you know, sort of crumbled. And she looked at me and she goes, try not to break the cookies. Like that. Wow. Wow. Try not to break the cookies. Yeah. I was like, oh yeah, that's such good advice.

Yeah, yeah, because I was really planning on going through them one by one. I wasn't before, but now I will. Yeah, tell me about it. Right. Because before, when we were living in Brooklyn, I remember I was in a playgroup. And the other mothers did other things. You know, they were like, they had other jobs besides being a mom. But when we first came... Out here, it was like Planet Eisenhower. You know, it was just... Fascinating. You know, by the time...

Somebody was 35. They had like three kids and maybe like a kid who was like 12, you know. It was a different thing. And their husbands had like corporate jobs. And their excitement was like redoing their house or redoing their kitchen or having a pool put in or gardening. But it was weird. You know, being a freelance person, I tried. I would sometimes be a class mom. Did you ever do that? Yes, I did. I was a class mom where I would organize the kids to make sort of a group.

art project and then it would get raffled. And so we did some kind of neat things. Oh, that's cool. That I kind of liked. And there was always this... tension between mothers who are always available for school, always available, and then people like me who I was not always available. And then I felt unbelievably anxious and guilty about that. Yeah, same, same. How did you get through that? And did you find a person or...

Anybody that you did? I did. I had a very good friend who actually I just saw she came over on Halloween, so we're still friends. But she's a painter. And the people, shockeroo of shocks, the people that I became friends with were Jen. uh-huh you know they were people who had like other pulls on their time and their attention and because you know i think when you're a mom there is this kind of weird

part of you that's maybe something in society that just says, you give up everything. You're a mother, you must drop everything and just be a mom. And if you're not that, then there's something wrong with you.

I mean, I know you talk about you parented your first child one way and your second child a different way, right? Yeah, I did. I did because when— I only knew two modes, which were screaming and hitting, which I was not either of those things. And being a doormat. And I was more of a doormat and passive. And that didn't work either. And I... learned a lot from a couple of very good parenting books. I'm not a self-help book reader ever, but I had a sort of like a crisis moment with my older kid.

in a grocery store when he was around five. where usually I was so anxious about, my husband is very laid back. You know, he's one of three kids from the Midwest and just a much more sort of laid back sort of person. He got along very well with my son because he would let him do things, like climb up really high in a tree because he felt confident that if he fell, he could catch him, whereas I didn't. So he could go to the park with him and...

My son could do all these kinds of crazy stunts that I would not let him because I would just be seeing like ambulances and blood and, you know, horrible things, bones sticking out from skin and, you know, death, death. Anyway, we were in the grocery store and I decided...

I am not going to be my usual don't do this, don't do that self. I'm going to be more like my husband, more laid back. And sure, you want to spray it. Remember, like there used to be like vegetable sprayers with water and it'd be like a hose. Oh, yeah. I'm going to let him do that. You know, sure, you can do that. I'm going to let you like pick up products. And at the end of the day, at the end of this trip, I'm like sweating bullets. You know, it's just like I'm.

Keeping all of my anxieties, all of my, sure, this is fun. This is really great. Look, it's fun. He. did something he's like started swinging the cart and he let go of the cart and it went into this whole thing of like glass jars there's glass everywhere there's glass and sauce, and it was a huge disaster. And it wasn't like one glass. It was like many, many, many, many jars. So your fever anxiety dream came true. Oh, yeah.

We left the cart. I said to my son, I said, I'm so angry I cannot even speak. And we went home, and he ran upstairs, and I was telling my husband about this, and I was alternating. crying and laughing, like snot just pouring, you know, because it was funny, but it was so horrible and I was so angry and so upset. And also because I had gone against my instinct of like trying to control.

And the next day I went to the library and I took out a bunch of books, you know, everything that I could find about how to do this. And I found two really good books. Which books? I'm so curious to know. One was called How to Talk So Your Kids Will Listen and How to Listen So Your Kids Will Talk, which I just thought was so good. Wonderful book. Wonderful book. And it was something that... I had that book.

It was just so good. And what was the other one? Stop Struggling With Your Child, it was called. And they were both very similar in that... It was a third path. It was not being a doormat, but also not screaming and hitting and yelling and just losing. A third path. A third path. And some of it was just about... good things to remember when you're bringing up kids like don't blame but you can describe like the wet towel is on the bed

Not like, why are you so lazy? You've left the towel. You always do this. Not like accusing and starting a fight. And if they don't get it, you pull it. And if they go, so you bring them back, you point, you can say it like really direct. The wet towel is on the bed. And they put it together. The jacket's on the floor. Your jacket is on the floor. You know? And I need you to come to my house.

I need you to come to my house. It was great. It was so good. And it really helped. It helped a lot. It's funny because I still have a lot of anxiety as a mom. And I love being a mom, of course. I don't know how I would characterize my anxiety, except to say that I am always trying to keep it at bay. Yes, yes, same. Which takes a lot of energy. Can we just say that? Maybe it's... I don't know whether it's encoded genetically for me, having very anxious parents. Yeah.

I don't know if there's anything I can really do about it. It does seem like this is part of... How are you even pregnant? I mean, were you a basket case when you were pregnant? Yes, I was a basket case. And I do think that... My body must have secreted some sort of anti-anxiety hormone to kind of because right now when I think about it, it's like, how did I do that? Like, that's so horrible. The idea of a person inside of you. I much preferred labor to being pregnant.

You know, because at least that was like... You're getting it out? I'm getting it out. There's doctors, something goes wrong, something, whatever. But pregnancy, it's like there's a whole person. It's just, it's the horrible thing. You're growing a person. It's disgusting. There's like eyeballs. There's like another set of eyeballs inside of me. I don't like that. But, you know, so that's why I think there must have been like some sort of weird like.

calm down Ra's hormone sort of being... I'm sure. I'm sure that that is actually the case. When you, you know, your hormones are all going so crazy when you get, when you're pregnant anyway that... there was probably something that got you through it. You did it. You did it twice. To me, it's like a miracle to have a relationship with my kids that I did not have with my mother. So I am grateful to them. Every day. Yeah. That they've allowed that. Yeah. And you've obviously done something to...

cultivate that so that you do have a relationship? I mean, for example, you went and you got the parenting books. I mean, you worked at it. Yeah, yeah. I did not assume that I knew everything because I knew I didn't. And I think that was different from – I don't know if they had that when my parents had me. I mean, there was Dr. Spock. There was Dr. Spock. But I think that –

Even when I was growing up, I think that parenting wasn't yet a verb. I think you're right. I think that happened in my generation as a parent and in your generation when you were a parent. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But I think that that... became a verb later. I think you're right. Yeah. Speaking of parenting as a verb, we have another cartoon of yours that I'd love to talk with you about. It's the cartoon about the sex talk.

Oh, my God. Does this make me laugh so hard? Can you read this for the listeners, this cartoon? Yes, this is a heart-to-heart talk. It's a mother talking to her teenage, young teenage daughter, and she's saying, in my day, it wasn't like nobody did anything. But certain things you only did with certain people. I'm not talking about certain things. I'm talking about certain...

Other things. Nowadays, it seems like people do certain things with people because they think that those things are less intimate than certain other things rather than vice versa. And we know what those things are. Oh, it's so great. There's certain things. So wonderful. That is a marvelous cartoon. That really made me laugh. Did you have those conversations with your kids? I think... Only when forced to. You know, they're kind of... I don't really remember. I think...

I probably did at some, or I had with my daughter, who is now actually my son. I have one kid, my younger kid is trans. So I might have had some sort of talk. like that with her, that went along with the need to use deodorant, that sort of thing. I had with one of my sons, he was youngish, and he was using the word... hump a lot. And I said to him, honey, do you know what that word means? Because it was inappropriate, right? And I said, do you know what that word means? He goes, no.

And then I sort of took the opportunity to tell him what humping was and how sex worked. And I told him pretty sort of scientifically kind of. And I remember we were in the car and he looks at me and he just goes, why did you just tell me that? You know what? I just suddenly remembered when you were describing it, the sex talk I had with my daughter. Tell me. Oh, my God. I mean, it was as weird, almost as weird as that. It was because she at the time...

was in maybe like third grade or something. And some little girl in the class told her that if a boy held your hand, it would put a baby in your tummy. She was very upset about this. So then I thought, okay, I have to tell her about the whole situation. And I just, for those of you who are... listening, I just made that horrible junior high bar mitzvah hand gesture of... Finger going into hole. Yeah, finger going into hole. And after I finished describing what...

Things, where things went. She looked at me and she said, I feel like I'm dreaming. You're kidding. Swear to God, I feel like I'm dweeming. And I want to say I'm dweeming. I feel like I'm dweeming. And I wanted to tell her, yeah, yeah, it does kind of, it is like that. Exactly. That's adorable. That's adorable. I love that. I feel like I'm dreaming. It's time for one last break. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

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I do want to talk about your memoir because it really, it is so helpful and honest and helpful in the sense that, because I, you know, my... Dad passed away and my mother-in-law is very aged and with caregivers. So we're sort of in the throes of, yeah. Yeah. Is there anything that you wish you had known in the beginning of that caregiving adventure that you had? Oh, man. I don't know. I don't know whether it's better to know.

about it in advance or, you know, because there's aspects of it that are just so awful that maybe it's better not to know, you know. There were things that were very helpful, like... A friend of mine connected me with an elder lawyer, and that was an extremely helpful thing. Because you had trouble talking honestly and openly with your parents about— End of life decisions and so on and so forth. Yeah. Yeah. It's just awful. And it's weird. I'm kind of, I'm going through it in a much more...

muted way with my aunt right now, my mother's baby sister, who is now 106. What the hell? Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. She is, she's outlived both of her kids. And of course, everybody else. But she is, and she's okay. I mean, she uses a walker and she's hard of hearing, but she's mentally... You know, she says, oh, I'm forgetful and stuff, but she's very much still there. Is she in a home? She is, yes. Last September, she was living...

independently until a year ago September. And I got her into an assisted living place nearby and sold her house and, you know, all that stuff. I'm amazed that you had to do that after having done this with your parents. It's different, though. First of all, she was much more... Pliable? Pliable and... She had taken care of a lot of things. Like she had a lawyer that I would work with a lawyer sometimes. My parents never addressed any of this. I see. Yes.

I have this card on the refrigerator that has, you know, the name of the funeral home. And like she wants to be cremated. And this is the company. And this is like, you know, the numbers for when I. So. Yeah, it's different, but it's just, it's so, I don't know, I guess not to be like soapboxy about it, but it's just like one way that...

I feel like our society just doesn't really give a shit about if you don't contribute to the economy, why don't you just fuck off and die? Why don't you just be dead right now? Because if you're not making money, if you're not... contributing to the economy of this country, you might as well be dead. Yeah, there's really no system in place, you know, other than... Nothing, yeah, other than family. And if you're lucky, if you're lucky, you have means to...

Figure it out. Right. But it's an expensive undertaking. Oh, yeah. I mean, she had a little house in New Jersey, and that is slowly going to her care right now. I mean, slowly, it's like, you know. $10,000, $11,000 a month, which is still good compared to a lot of places. I mean, they really know these places. It's almost like a black comedy. They know they have you over a barrel. Yeah, because they do. Because they do. You know, there's no...

they'll just take it all. And with my parents, I mean, it was particularly hilarious in a kind of black comedy way because they were children of the Depression and had grown up so poor and they were such... scrimpers and savers. And they would come up here and my father would say, so what are they charging for Fig Newtons in your area? And, you know, I couldn't tell him. It was like, if they were $22, I'd know. But like, are they $3.49? Are they $4.99?

Are they $2.99? I don't know. But they were such penny pinchers and self-deniers and, you know, no, you can't have that. You can't have this. You can't have that, you know. And then at the end, whew. It all went. All. So that was that. Well, I think that I have to say that if anyone who's listening to this...

is in that situation. I would recommend reading your book. I mean, I mentioned it in the intro to you, but I think it's a good salve for the kind of wound that is opened up when you have to really, truly take over. in terms of caregiving for a loved one. I think your book was very helpful. Did you write that book after? I mean, my father died in 2007 and my mother died in 2009.

It was published in 2014. But I was starting to get this idea that I think I want to write something about this because it was such, it was all like new information to me. Yeah. You know, I just had no idea how much. A person is on their own dealing with end of life care. Right. How much it's like you and your parents and you're on this little boat and there's nobody around. Yeah.

When my dad died, and the end of his life was a bit of an agony, and then once he was dead, there was sort of a new way to frame him. It was sort of like all of a sudden you knew the whole story of him. And I remember speaking like at a service that we had for him, and I could sort of talk about him now that he was gone in a way that I couldn't when he was alive, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, I think that there is something.

About that, that you don't see things until they're gone. I don't know. Or you see it in a different way. Maybe more fully. Yeah. Or something. Yeah. And maybe you also understand that. You're next. And that's, you know, you understand on this sort of...

really intense level that just gets more and more intense the older you get, that this is life. Sounds like such a cliche, but that's kind of what it is, you know? Yeah, but is it kind of freeing maybe? Yeah, it is kind of freeing in a way, I guess. No matter what you do, this is how it ends, you know. I know your parents, even though there was funkiness there, they were very close to each other.

I guess you would say. Very, very. And what was your takeaway from that in your own marriage? I think I have a different sort of marriage. My parents were very much each other's, like... They have a blended, very much of a blended world. They really, as I wrote about in the book, they did everything together. They were never really apart. And like the idea of... taking a vacation separately from your traveling.

to some place or traveling with a girlfriend or whatever or whatever would never have occurred to them. They barely went to the grocery store separately. They did everything in lockstep. And I... don't have that relationship. I sometimes wonder what it would have been like, whether that would be good, but I don't. I don't think so either. I think one of the reasons why we've been married a long time is that...

You know, he adores Halloween. I'm not so into it. It's not like, you know, some crisis that we need to throw $100,000 at a couples counselor about. It's like... You do this. And he's not a big fan of New York. New York is my life. I mean, he's joked that the great love affair of my life is with New York City, which is true. I just love it. so, so, so much. I do too. You know, I sometimes feel embarrassingly in love with it. And like, I want to...

say, no, I'm not being paid by some tourist association. I adore it. But he doesn't feel that way. And I have an apartment there. And I go there a lot. And it's okay.

Oh, well, I just can't tell you what a delight it is to talk to you, honestly. What a great conversation. Okay, I'm going to ask you a quick little couple of questions, and then I'll let you go. Okay? Yep. So is there something, Roz, in your life that you would like to go back and say yes to? Yeah. Around 19... 79 or 80, I was with some friends, and they were going to some club downtown to hear this new singer that was...

apparently very good, named Madonna. And I said, nah, I'm tired. I'm going to go home. So, yeah. I feel a little bit bad about that. Is there something that you wish you'd spent less time on? Cooking. Even less than now. I'm guessing people in your family might laugh at that answer. Maybe, because they would say...

It's not like you spent like that much time, Mom. You know, I still remember rock pizza, which was, do you know those like, that Pillsbury dough that comes in the thing and you break it open and it goes bleh? Yeah, it's like a biscuity piece of dough. Yes, it's a biscuity dough and it has a certain chemical taste because it's all like... Because it's chemicals. Because it's all chemicals. But... Somehow every time I made it, the dough came out very hard and my kids would call it rock piece.

So, yeah. Yeah, so maybe less time on cooking is a good idea. Yeah. And is there something you're looking forward to? Yeah, Thanksgiving. That's nice. Yeah. Everybody, the kids are going to come. We're their partners and their families. And so, yeah. Oh, that's lovely. I don't really like Thanksgiving food, to be honest with you, but I like being together as a group. Yes. That's very happy making.

I like the colors. I do like Thanksgiving food, actually. I like that, the way the cranberry sauce looks. And speaking of colors, I want to just end by telling you one thing. So I have this, I got to get my phone. Hold on. Don't move. I'm not moving. I'm not moving.

So I went to the farmer's market on the weekend and I got flowers because I like to have flowers around. And I was getting ready to talk to you and I was looking at these flowers, which are zinnias. I had them in a vase. And I thought... You know, this reminds me of Ra's chest because it's your colors. Oh, wow. And even the flowers themselves look like you to me.

It looks like flowers you would draw. And so I just wanted to tell you that, that you remind me of zinnias. Well, thank you. Thank you. I'm taking that as a compliment. I love zinnias. It is a compliment, yeah. Yeah. They're great flowers. They're great flowers. They're hearty and they're very colorful. Yes. And I can't tell you how much I've loved talking to you today. Well, vice versa. This was really a pleasure. This was really fun.

So thank you. Okay, I just have to call my mom. She has been so looking forward to my conversation with Roz since I told her that Roz was coming on the show. So let's get her on the Zoom now.

Hi, Mommy. Hi, love. Hi. Mother, I spoke with Roz Chass today, and you can only imagine how charming and fantastic she is. I want to marry her. Yes, you do. And I want to marry her, too. Because that is how wonderful she is. For reals. Everything she does is wonderful. I've never... Do you know what I mean? Yeah. She's just... Everything... And...

By the way, I read a memoir of hers, I thought I read sometime, that she had a baby sister that they never talked about. She had a sister who died before she was born. And here's what's so fascinating. So I said, were you aware of the fact as a kid that you had had a sister who... died before you were born. And she said, well, I found out when I was 12. And I said, how did you find out? And she said, well, I was in the car with my mom. And I said,

Tell me something about yourself I don't know yet. And her mother just told her in that moment. Can you believe what I just told you? That is incredible. Can I ask you that question? Maybe another time. Okay. Yeah. Maybe it's not for public consumption. Yeah. For our listeners, I'll plant a secret recording device and I'll let you know what she says. Oh, oh, oh. We'll fool them. So listen.

One thing we talked about was this particular cartoon that I'm going to ask our folks to pull up right now. And I had her read it aloud, Mom, and this is her. heart-to-heart talk. Look at the face of the mother and the daughter. So this was the sex talk her mother had with her. Look at the face. Look at the face of the girl on the sofa. She's just miserable. So, Mom, do you remember sex talks that we had growing up? Do you remember any of that?

I don't remember. Did we have many? No, that's what I was wondering. I think you have yet to tell me how it works. Yeah, well, I figured to leave you alone, you would find out. Yeah, I think that was it. You left us alone, and we all found out eventually, I guess. Well, I figured that you could tell each other, and that would be a help, and you had some good friends.

That was a huge shortcoming of mine. That was, I mean, just in terms of communication because I was, I mean, my parents never mentioned, my mother never mentioned. sex to me except to say that only men liked it. And that was her talk to me. And then I never really had anybody to ask. So I just, you know, talked to my friends and I sort of learned whatever I learned. And Judy and I would talk about it and we would try to get books about it. And then we would sometimes ask her father.

Because her father would talk to us about sex. But, you know, we asked such funny questions, which was, how long does it take? That's a legit question. And so he told us 20 minutes. So I've always thought it took 20 minutes. 20 minutes was the time. Here's your watch. Now you've got it. Now you're all finished. Well, you know, when I was little and I had my friend Jessica. And somehow we got it in our heads that fucking meant if two people sat on the toilet at the same time and went pee-pee.

So we, so she and I. When we had to go pee, we'd go sit on the toilet together and go pee. I mean, that shows you how tiny we were, that both of our bottoms would sit on top of the toilet. And we would pee and we would call it that we were fucking. Oh, isn't language wonderful? Yeah. I mean, the whole, what the word opened up in you, it's just the whole universe there that, you know, it's just.

That's so marvelous. Okay, my mommy. Well, so there you go. That's Roz Chast. Well, I'm so, it was, it's just, I'm getting, I'm getting floating. blessing from you for from her just because thank god there are people like that isn't it i know it isn't it the truth you're you're featuring somebody like that and uh it's it just should be known and known and known

Yeah. Yeah, I feel lucky that today was a lucky day. Yeah. Okay. Love you. Love you, my mom. I love you, too. And take care, and I will see you soon. Okay. Okay. Bye. Bye.

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Make sure you're following Wiser Than Me on social media. We're on Instagram and TikTok at Wiser Than Me, and we're on Facebook at Wiser Than Me Podcast. We're also on Substack at wiserthanme.substack.com. Wiser Than Me is a production of Lemonada Media, created and hosted by me, Julia Louis-Dreyfus. The show is produced by Chrissy Pease and Oja Lopez. Brad Hall is a consulting producer. Rachel Neal is consulting senior editor and our...

SVP of weekly content and production is Steve Nelson. Executive producers are Paula Kaplan, Stephanie Whittles-Wax, Jessica Cordova-Kramer, and me. The show was mixed by Johnny Vince Evans with engineering help from James Barber, and our music was written by Henry Hall, who you can also find on Spotify or wherever you listen to your music. Special thanks to Will Schlegel and, of course, my mother, Judith.

Bowles. Follow Wiser Than Me wherever you get your podcasts. And if there's an old lady in your life, listen up.